# Albertsons and Academy Sports Make Incrementality Measurement Standard for Retail Media Buyers

*Two major chains now require proof of sales lift, forcing brands to justify every retail media dollar spent.*

By **Jenny Huang Goodman MPA MSc MHSA, Principal** — The Stash Edge, Hako Shikin LLC.
Published 2026-08-03.

Canonical: https://www.pops4.com/stash/articles/retail-media-networks-2026-08-03t21-6
Subject: Retail media networks
Tags: retail media, incrementality, measurement, albertsons, academy sports, media effectiveness

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Albertsons and Academy Sports both announced incrementality measurement capabilities in their retail media platforms this month, marking a shift from impression-based reporting to sales-lift accountability. According to industry reporting, brands can now track whether their retail media placements drove actual purchases beyond baseline, not just views or clicks.

Both retailers built measurement tools that compare sales in exposed versus unexposed customer cohorts. Albertsons Media Collective introduced incrementality testing across its digital and in-store media inventory. Academy Sports integrated similar methodology into its retail media network. The measurement runs at the SKU level, showing which placements moved units and which delivered audience reach without conversion.

The mechanism works because these retailers control both the media exposure and the transaction data. A brand running a sponsored product ad on Albertsons.com can now see if shoppers who saw the ad bought more than shoppers who did not, adjusting for seasonality and promotional calendar. The retailer isolates the media effect from other variables — price changes, distribution shifts, competitive activity — and reports the incremental volume attributable to the placement. Brands get a read-out in lift percentage and cost per incremental sale, not just impressions or click-through rate.

This matters because retail media has grown faster than measurement rigor. Brands have poured budget into retail media networks — now a **$54 billion** market in the U.S. according to GroupM estimates — often on faith that proximity to purchase drives conversion. Incrementality measurement removes the faith. If a sponsored placement on a grocer's site costs **$0.80** per incremental unit and the product margin is **$1.20**, the math works. If the cost per incremental unit is **$2.50**, it does not.

For a small physical-product brand, the play is to demand incrementality data before committing retail media budget. Start with a test cell: run a **$500** sponsored product campaign on one retailer's platform and request a post-campaign incrementality read-out. Compare the cost per incremental sale to your unit margin. If the retailer cannot provide incrementality data, run your own holdout test. Suppress ads to a control group of zip codes, run full exposure in matched treatment zips, and compare sell-through velocity in both. Use the retailer's dashboard to pull weekly sales by geography. Calculate lift as the difference in units sold per store per week, treatment minus control. If lift is positive and cost-per-incremental-unit is below margin, scale the spend. If not, pull budget and reallocate.

The steel requires no new software. Retailers with incrementality tools will provide the report. Retailers without the tools will still give you geographic sales data if you ask. The holdout design is undergraduate statistics: match markets on size and demographics, randomize treatment, measure difference. The cost is the discipline to run a clean test before scaling spend. The win is that you fund only the placements that move product, not the ones that look good in a deck.

Retail media incrementality is now table-stakes because brands will comparison-shop networks on cost-per-lift, not cost-per-impression. The retailer that can prove a **15% sales lift** at **$1.00** per incremental unit wins budget from the retailer offering **8% lift** at **$1.50**. Measurement becomes the new competitive moat.

## The takeaway

Demand incrementality data before scaling retail media spend, or run your own holdout test using geographic sales splits.

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## Publisher

**Hako Shikin LLC** — Virginia Beach, Virginia. Founded 1997. ASI 217876 · DUNS 18-204-6339.
Principal and author: **Jenny Huang Goodman MPA MSc MHSA**.

- Author: https://www.huanggoodman.com/about
- LLM context: https://www.pops4.com/stash/llms.txt
- MCP endpoint, for AI agents: https://mcp.pops4.com/mcp
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- Catalogue: 70,000+ products, 200+ brands